


Hide

by Ischa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Banishment, Curses, Harry Potter Next Generation, M/M, Obsessive Behavior, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-06
Updated: 2011-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-21 02:49:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ischa/pseuds/Ischa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A hand brushes against someone else's in a crowd, an everyday occurrence. Something most people forget as soon as it happens, but Albus is not anyone and one brush of a stranger's skin against his changes everything.<br/>This is a story about Albus chasing something he can't describe and Scorpius being invisible.</p><p>
  <em>Albus closes his eyes and just breathes. A soft noise to his left makes his eyes snap open und his head turn sharply.</em>
  <br/>
  <i>“You’re  not giving up, hmm?” Scorpius says, smoke curling around a finger like a  lazy snake. It’s pale and purple, still looks like a living thing if  you don’t look too closely.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hide

**Title:** Hide  
**Author:**    
**Pairing:** Albus/Scorpius, Albus/OFC  
**Rating:** R  
**Summary:** A hand brushes against someone else's in a crowd, an everyday occurrence. Something most people forget as soon as it happens, but Albus is not anyone and one brush of a stranger's skin against his changes everything.  
This is a story about Albus chasing something he can't describe and Scorpius being invisible.  
_Albus closes his eyes and just breathes. A soft noise to his left makes his eyes snap open und his head turn sharply._  
“You’re not giving up, hmm?” Scorpius says, smoke curling around a finger like a lazy snake. It’s pale and purple, still looks like a living thing if you don’t look too closely.  
**Warning(s):** sex, violence (nothing graphic)  
**Author’s Notes:** Title and chapter quotes from Hide U by Kosheen. All my love to my awesome beta asm_z. Written for jezzifishie over at [The AS/S-fest](http://the-ass-fest.livejournal.com).  
**Word Count:** 3.863  
**Beta:**  asm_z  
**Disclaimer:** Don’t know, don’t own, not real

\--+--  
~1~  
_If you were in my heart_

  
~+~  
It's only a brush of skin on skin. A moment frozen in time. A second, maybe not even that long. He turns around and all he sees is soft blond hair, a pale neck, a back clad in black. And then it's gone like a vision. Albus rubs his hand where it prickles like something just bore into his skin. A needle, deep, scraping the bone. He can almost hear the sound it would make. He shakes his head at the foolish thought. His mom always said he had too much imagination.

~+~  
The feeling doesn't go away. He rubs at his skin until it's raw and red. Emilie looks at him and shakes her head. He kind of wants to scream at her to stop caring. But he doesn't, because it's not her fault. That is who she is. The same girl he dated for months. The same girl he wants to live with. The same girl he took home to meet his parents.  
She gives him a worried look and he shakes his head, tries a smile. It feels strained on his face.

“It's nothing,” he says.

“Maybe you should go and see Dad,” she answers.

“Don't think so, we have so much to do...it's nothing,” he says again. He really doesn't want to see Healer Longbottom right now. Stuff always gets around to his parents somehow.

“Okay,” she says. She doesn't sound pleased by his decision.

~+~  
Albus is glad she is visiting her mom in London when the dreams start. Shapeless figures in a dark room. Laugher and bells and hands holding him down.  
He wakes up in a sweat, breathing hard and fighting for control. Something.  
Sometimes he reaches out and clenches his hands around something that isn't there.

~+~  
He can't stop caressing, massaging the skin on the back of his hand; the brush of skin on skin never forgotten.  
Haunting him in his dreams and his waking hours.

~+~  
“It doesn't really look better,” Emilie says, taking his hand in his. She makes an attempt to stroke her finger over the red raw skin and he snatches his hand away as if she burned him. “What?” she asks irritated and he has no idea, no answer.

“I don't want you to touch me,” he says, because it's the only thing on his mind and it's the only truth he has right now for her.

“Al,” she says. Her voice soft and that irritates him too, it never used to before. “You're acting strange and that just isn't...you.”  
He nods, but thinks that maybe this is more _him_ than what he was before. Who he was before.

“I think we should break up,” he answers and doesn't feel anything, anything at all, when she starts to cry.

~+~  
He moves out, because he can't stand being with her stuff, their stuff, all of the time. His mom wants him to come back live with them again, but he refuses. He feels like he needs to be somewhere else. He doesn't know where.  
His dad says nothing and Albus is grateful for it.

  
~2~  
_Away from the world you rejected_

  
~+~  
The itching stops when he moves out and settles into his new place. He doesn't put much effort or furniture into his new apartment, because he knows that this is only a stop, a place to rest his head before he's gone again. He's driven. He doesn't know where, or to whom, or if he ever will find it. But he knows he can't stay.

~+~  
He hides in clubs, behind smoke and bodies and beer. He doesn't take anyone home. The break up still too fresh, but he wants to. Every night he's out dancing, he wants to take these beautiful strangers up on their offers and take them home. Let them take him home.

~+~  
He's a statue, a picture frozen in time, a figure stopped in motion by strobe-light. Albus sees him take a drag form his cigarette in perfect clarity and then exhale. Flashes of movement. Surreal at best.  
When he's shoved his way through the bodies he's gone. The only proof that he was there is the cold ash on the floor.

~+~  
Albus feels hot and confused. And horny. Nearly all the time now. He is looking for something. That flash of blond hair, the pale neck, everywhere he goes now. That person who made him feel like this. Like he was a ghost. By the fifth month after that brush of skin on skin, he’s down to a diet of cigarettes and whisky.  
He's hiding away from the world. His ex-girlfriend, his parents, Healer Longbottom, his siblings. Everyone, really  
He never used to be like this.

~+~  
One Saturday morning, coming back from a club, he remembers a day in sixth grade with a sudden clarity.  
__  
The boy was standing near the greenhouse, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Gloved fingers playing with a rumpled pack. Albus knew that smoking wasn't allowed on the school grounds, but he also knew that there were a few spots where students did it anyway.  
The greenhouse wasn't one of them. The sun was pale and not very strong. The sky a grey mass of shapeless clouds. It was fucking cold as well, as it was February. He had a cold and he sneezed, cursing himself under his breath.  
The boy looked in his direction then. He smiled around his cigarette, but didn't say a word. Albus smiled back, but found his behaviour kind of disturbing. The boy exhaled smoke, raised his hand and the smoke shaped itself into a dragon, another movement of his hand and it became a dragonfly and then just vanished slowly turning form grey to blue and then red.  
“Call me impressed,” Albus had said and the boy had laughed, silently. The wind didn't carry his voice to Albus, it tore it away like the smoke.

He shakes his head; he has no idea why he remembered this right now. Except that this boy, and he is sure of it, was his someone.

~+~  
He nearly tears his old room apart while he's looking for photographic evidence that this boy went to school with him. He finds a group picture of the whole year and at the edge, standing a bit away from all the other students he finds the boy.

~+~  
“You remember him?” he asks Emilie, showing her the picture. She looks puzzled.

“No,” she says.

“Isn't that odd?” he wants to know.

“That's why you wanted to meet with me?” she asks.

“Yes. I need to find him,” he answers.

“Albus...”

“I need to...I don't know. Why can't I remember? Or you, for that matter?” he says. She reaches out, but curls her fingers and rests her hand on the table beside him instead of touching.

“I don't know. Ask the teachers?”

“Yeah...thank you,” he says and means it. She is a better person than him.

~+~  
Professor Zabini looks kind of annoyed, but then Professor Zabini always looked kind of annoyed.

“Mister Potter,” he says.  
Albus still has an irrational fear of him. It's not that Professor Zabini ever did anything cruel or evil or whatever. It's just something about him that makes you pay attention.

“Professor...” Albus says, fidgeting in his seat.

Professor Zabini smiles and leans forward a bit to look at Albus. Albus waits. “How may I help you?” he asks after a while.  
Albus exhales slowly and takes out the picture he's found at the bottom of his trunk.

“This student,” he says pointing at the boy with the pale hair and beautiful neckline. “Who is he?”

“Shouldn't you know all your fellow students?” Professor Zabini asks, but he is staring at the picture like he's seen a ghost.

“You remember him?”

“Yes...” Professor Zabini says.

“What's his name?”

“Malfoy, Scorpius Etienne,” the professor answers.

“He's Draco Malfoy's son...” Albus says, somehow everything and nothing makes sense now.

“Yes.”

“I never noticed him,” Albus says slowly, softly.

“You weren't supposed to,” Professor Zabini answers, standing up.

“No one was.”

“Yes,” he says.

“I can remember him...in flashes,” Albus admits. Professor Zabini looks sharply at him. Albus is sure he is missing something.

“It doesn't matter now that you can, I think,” he answers, standing at the door to his office. It’s his not so subtle hint for Albus to get lost. Albus knows that not so subtle hint from his visits as a student.

“Thank you, professor,” he says, getting up.

“I'm not sure you should,” Professor Zabini says.

“What?”

“Thank me,” he answers.

  
~3~  
_I surely not break you_

  
~+~  
“Draco Malfoy's son spent all his years in Hogwarts under a 'Notice-Me-Not' charm,” he says, taking a sip from his whisky.

“Yes,” his dad says, pouring himself a glass and gulping half of it down in one go.

“And you knew? I'm not surprised,” he adds. He is mad, he is furious. How can that be okay? Ever? Weren’t they fighting for freedom and love and understanding in the great war? His dad looks sharply at him.

“There were reasons for that. He was dangerous. I think he still is, but we couldn't deny him his education...” his dad trails off. Albus thinks that he sounds like he’s regretting something. Albus wonders if his dad regrets that he let this happen, or the fact that the education in Hogwarts made Malfoy’s son even stronger. Now that is a nasty thought.  
Albus wants to break something or punch someone.

“How can that be okay? He spent seven years, seven years, dad, alone in a castle full of people,” he answers.

“Albus...”

“I saw him doing magic once. It was beautiful. I've never seen something like that. He is fucking talented, not dangerous.”

“He is both,” his dad says firmly.

“It's still not right. I don't even want to hear your reasons, your excuses, for what you did,” he says disgusted.

His dad sighs. “You did see him?” he asks.

“Yes, it was cold and he made a dragon out of cigarette smoke...I just remembered a few weeks ago,” Albus says, rubbing the red, raw skin of his hand absent-mindedly.

His dad gives him another sharp look. “Where did you get that?”

“I don't know...” he answers and it is the truth. “Something bit me, I think, a few...a while ago,” he finished, because even he knows that it’s not normal for a bite to need months to heal. On the other hand, he is constantly playing with it, scratching and can’t let it go or heal over properly.

“Albus, did you touch him?”

“No, he never even spoke to me,” that is the truth as well.  
His dad nods, but he has his thinking face on. Albus knows that one. All too well. It’s not his favourite. It’s the one he gets when Albus or one of his siblings are in trouble.

“You’re not letting this go, are you?” he asks.

Albus shakes his head. No, he won’t.

~+~  
He sees the flash of blond hair out of the corner of his eye and stops, turns and runs. Without a word to James, who is cursing and shouting something. Usually it’s James who ditches him, but Albus has really no time to appreciate the irony here. He fights his way through the bodies, elbows some people, nearly runs a girl over, and looks around in a panic when he reaches the other end. When the crowd thins out, he’s staring at the old, dark buildings of Knockturn Alley.  
He lost him.

“Damn…” he mutters under his breath, leaning against a wall and trying to catch his breath. He never was the athletic type. Running is not something he does for fun and it shows when he’s chasing someone.

~+~  
The next time he spots the blond hair and pale neck, he abandons his table and his sister without as much as a hasty apology.  
Albus loses him again around another corner of Knockturn Alley and he really needs to work out more, he thinks gasping for air.  
Albus closes his eyes and just breathes. A soft noise to his left makes his eyes snap open und his head turn sharply.

“You’re not giving up, hmm?” Scorpius says, smoke curling around a finger like a lazy snake. It’s pale and purple, still looks like a living thing if you don’t look too closely.

“Scorpius?” Albus says. It’s not really a question, but he has actually no idea how Scorpius looked at 17 when he left school. A year later and he has still no clue, but there is a resemblance to his dad. Scorpius features are softer somehow, his eyes not the icy cold grey, but it’s in the pale skin, the light hair, how he carries himself.

“Yes, Potter, but didn’t you know that?” he asks, the smoke snake slithers up his arm and curls around his neck.  
Albus nods, he did. “What do you want?” Scorpius asks, taking another drag of his cigarette. Albus shakes his head, he has no idea. He rubs his hand absentmindedly and just breathes, trying not to stare at Scorpius’ lips. Scorpius’ gaze follows the movement of Albus’ fingers. “Fuck,” he says. Albus is pretty sure he misses something here.

“I remembered you,” he says instead of something…anything else.

“I wish I could forget,” Scorpius says, leaning on the opposite wall and closing his eyes briefly. He looks strangely vulnerable like that.

“I wish I could remember more,” Albus confesses. Scorpius laughs. It doesn’t sound amused.

“Okay, Potter. I know why you’re here. You just don’t get what the hell happened,” he straightens up and gets his wand out. Albus tenses, but relaxes when Scorpius tips it to his own head.

“We don’t have a Pensieve,” Albus says.

“I don’t need one,” Scorpius answers, the silvery trait of memory curling around his wand and finger, like the smoke did. He waves his other hand and a small stone lifts from the floor. Albus watches as it expands and transforms. “There, now look,” Scorpius says. The silvery memory uncurls and slithers to the Pensieve.  
Albus has a second of doubt, but curiosity wins out, it always does.

~+~  
_He’s eleven in this memory, like all the other kids he recognizes. It’s maybe the first week of Hogwarts and he can feel the excitement of everything new. It’s a good memory, he remembers that. He’s wrapped in his dad’s invisible cloak._

 _“It’s because it’s yours as well,” Scorpius says. He’s not there with Albus, but a part of him can feel Scorpius hovering._  
It’s after dinner and he got lost. He often got lost in the first few months. He hears noises and runs. He remembers what he’ll see before he sees it.  
Three boys shoving Scorpius into a room and Albus dives into it at the last second before the doors close.

_“Let me out!” Scorpius says and he looks pale and small and scared. The boys laugh. There are a few nasty words and more shoving and one of the boys draws his wand and Albus throws the cloak aside. Everyone is frozen in time. A picture of violence._

_Scorpius makes a noise and Albus is shoved against the wall, his wand falling to the ground. “I wasn’t of any help…” he mumbles and hears Scorpius laugh.  
Things get really nasty from there. While Albus is held in place, the other two boys punch Scorpius and taunt him and Scorpius tells them to just stop._

_“I don’t want to hurt you,” he hears Scorpius say._

_“You can’t, you’re locked here with us, without a wand and without daddy to protect you,” one of the boys sneers._

_“I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with ME!” Scorpius answers, he’s trembling._

_The bigger of the boys laughs again. “Bring it” he says and then everything goes black._

“What happened?” Albus asks gasping for air, the silvery snake slithers away and to Scorpius again. Curls around his finger and then disappears into his head.

“I hurt everyone in there. You included. That’s why you can’t remember it…”

“But you can. How?”

“I absorbed your memory of that night, don’t ask me how. I wanted to and it happened.” Scorpius shrugs. “The headmistress found out anyway, hence the ‘Notice Me Not’ charm.”

“They thought that was an acceptable solution?” Albus asks, disbelieving.

Scorpius looks sharply at him. “You’re such a do-gooder, it’s kind of sickening,” he answers, but he smiles.

“You’re still hiding,” Albus says. It’s not a question.

“It’s habit by now, I guess,” Scorpius replies, taking out his pack and lighting a cigarette. The smoke he exhales is a small dragon chasing a butterfly.

“That is pretty cool,” Albus admits and Scorpius laughs.

“I had years to practice and amuse myself…” he sounds kind of bitter. Albus can understand that. “Now that you know, you can stop chasing me,” he adds, exhaling smoke. He doesn’t wait for a reply before he apparates.  
Albus really isn’t so sure he can.

~+~  
Now that he knows things, now that he got one memory back he starts to remember more. All the times he saw Scorpius, all the times he wanted to ask something, tell him something. Touch him. Scorpius was like a ghost hovering, close by, but never really noticed.  
It makes Albus angry. He’s sure they could’ve been friends.

~+~  
He sees Scorpius again in a café while he passes by. He sits down opposite Scorpius without asking if he can.

“Potter,” Scorpius says.

“You can call me by my first name, Albus,” he answers. Scorpius smiles.

“I don’t think anyone in my family has been on a first name basis with a Potter for centuries.”

“Not every family tradition is a good one,” Albus answers and Scorpius smiles.

~+~  
Albus can’t let it go. He seeks Scorpius out and Scorpius lets him, doesn’t tell him to stop, doesn’t reject him. With every day he spends with Scorpius, more memories come back and the itch under his skin lessens.

~+~  
“He did something to you” his dad says one Sunday after dinner, when it’s only the two of them. He doesn’t specify the ‘he’, but he really doesn’t need to.

“Oh please, just because I want to spend time with him?”

“Yes, and because you noticed him,” Harry answers. He looks worried.

“I kept noticing him, over the years in Hogwarts,” Albus says, “I just couldn’t remember.”

“He did something to you back then, it seems.”

“This is really none of your business,” Albus answers hotly.

“You’re my son and he’s a Malfoy, of course it’s my business.”

“I’m eighteen and not living with you anymore. I can see whoever I want!” he says.

“That’s what it is then? You’re seeing him?”  
Albus nods. He didn’t know he felt that way, but now that he said it out loud, yes, that’s what he’s doing.

~+~  
“I told my dad that we’re seeing each other,” he says.

“Hello to you too,” Scorpius answers, making room for Albus so he can enter the apartment.

“He told me you did something to me…”Albus goes on. He turns as he hears the soft click of the door closing. Scorpius is watching him. “He’s right, you did do something to me,” he feels helpless and vulnerable.

“Yeah…” Scorpius looks like he might say something Albus really doesn’t want to hear it right now, so he closes the space between them and grabs Scorpius’ shirt. “Shouldn’t we talk about this?” Scorpius asks. Albus shakes his head. He really, really doesn’t want to hear what Scorpius has to say, so he kisses him instead.

~+~  
They don’t make it to the bedroom. Scorpius pins him to the couch and makes breathing a lot more difficult. His whole body is tingling with pleasure and want and now. His clothes land on the floor and the skin on skin contact is nearly too much.  
The drag of Scorpius’ nails on his stomach and his sides, the soft moans he makes when Albus grabs his ass, the spark of something wild when his cock brushes Scorpius’. The perfect curve of his pale neck, his shoulder.

“I really want to bite you” he whispers into Scorpius’ skin and Scorpius laughs and doesn’t tell him no.  
His teeth leave a perfectly imperfect mark on Scorpius’ shoulder when he comes. He bites so hard he tastes blood and doesn’t see Scorpius fall apart above him. Only feels the shiver, the muscle tense and relax, his come between their bodies.

~+~  
“I did do something to you,” Scorpius says, his voice lazy, but intent. He’s holding a cigarette in one hand and playing with Albus’ fingers with the other.

“I really don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t matter,” Albus says.

“It does,” Scorpius answers, letting go of Albus’ hand. He’s sitting on the floor and they aren’t touching at all anymore. “I want you to know.”

“Okay,” Albus says.

“That time, the first time, when you wanted to help me, defend my honour or whatever stupid thing you thought you were doing because you’re a Potter…” he smiles at Albus and Albus rolls his eyes and smiles back, “I didn’t know what I was doing. I just wanted…I don’t even know. But the result is – my dad told me later, explained it all in detail actually, that somehow a part of me slipped into you as I took your memories…Sounds awful familiar, doesn’t it?” he asks. It does and Albus doesn’t know what to say to that. “Whatever, it would’ve have been fine, if we never met again. The touching was the problem…that one small brush of skin on skin.”

“You’re telling me the part of you that lives in me recognized your soul when we brushed against each other? That’s why I feel this way?”

“It did, and I don’t know if that’s the reason you feel this way. It’s the reason you remember me, noticed me, maybe even the reason for chasing me…I have no clue if it’s the reason you…like me,” he finished.

“It doesn’t matter,” Albus says.

“Albus…”

“It doesn’t matter!”

“It should!”

“It doesn’t,” he says firmly, tugging at Scorpius arm until he can kiss him. “It doesn’t matter.”

~end~


End file.
